WCAC Changes Hoop, Baseball Schedules, Gives Soccer a Boost

Several sports will have a different scheduling look next season in the West Coast Athletic Conference, and the WCAC could move to the forefront of collegiate soccer in the 1990s as a result of recent league meetings.

The biggest immediate news was a change in basketball and baseball scheduling--the WCAC will go back to playing conference basketball games on Thursdays and Saturdays, and baseball teams will again play home-and-home three-game series.

The basketball teams played on Fridays and Saturdays last season, largely because school presidents thought players missed too much class time playing on Thursdays and traveling on Fridays.

Most coaches didn’t care for the hectic travel arrangements dictated by back-to-back games, and road teams rarely won Saturday games. In fact, teams who had to run with Loyola Marymount on Fridays rarely had enough energy left to put up a fight on Saturdays.

The baseball change is a more drastic departure. For several seasons, WCAC teams have faced each other in only one four-game series, playing all at the same site Friday through Sunday. Now the teams will play single games Fridays and doubleheaders Saturdays at home and away against each team. That provides 36 conference games and gives the players Sundays off.

Loyola Athletic Director Brian Quinn said the advantages will be twofold: “We felt the four games were too much for the kids--it was very hard for them to have a normal life, and academically it was really hard to go to class Monday after playing all weekend. And it helps some of the teams in the conference who have trouble scheduling quality Division I competition. This way they’re guaranteed 36 Division I games within the conference.”

The other big item discussed at the meetings, Quinn said, was formation of women’s soccer within the WCAC. “It may be that soccer will be the women’s sport of the 1990s in college,” Quinn said. “Four or five (WCAC) schools are talking about forming (a league) in the next couple of years.”

Quinn said the WCAC is rated among the top three or four conferences nationally in men’s soccer--mostly thanks to the perennial success of San Francisco and Portland--and Loyola has played women’s soccer on the club level for years.

In building toward intercollegiate status, Quinn has hired Peter Novak as coach. He also has a new crew coach, Lee Miller, a former UCLA assistant, who will oversee men’s and women’s crew.

“Women’s soccer is a sport we feel we could have real success in,” Quinn said. “We’re going to play it as if it’s an intercollegiate sport (this fall). My intention is to go intercollegiate as soon as we can do so (financially).”

Schools in the WCAC are required to maintain 12 sports for the conference to have full-fledged Division I status. For many of the small private schools in the WCAC, that’s a challenge. USF last week dropped softball. Soccer provides a relatively low-budget avenue--but like many sports at Loyola, counts on nonscholarship athletes to walk on.

“It’s very hard right now for schools our size to fund 12 sports,” Quinn said. “We (Loyola) are in good shape because we’ve got crew as an authorized women’s sport. It’s hard if you don’t give scholarships. You have to be constantly selling walk-on programs.”

If the rise of soccer throughout the United States is an indication, women’s soccer may be an easy sell.

Cal State Dominguez Hills baseball Coach George Wing needed pitching even before losing staff ace Rick Davis to the pro draft. So in announcing eight signings, it’s not surprising six are pitchers.

Wing’s first class of recruits includes Vincent Aguilar and Doug Brown, pitchers out of Mt. San Antonio College; pitcher Leonard Fletcher from Harbor College, pitcher Jess Gonzales out of El Rancho High School, pitcher Armando Plascencia from Nogales High School, pitcher John Woods from Cypress College, first baseman Darrell Conner from Orange Coast College and outfielder-third baseman Eric Shibley from Barstow High School.

Aguilar, a junior left-hander, was 6-5 with a 3.13 earned-run average for Mt. Sac last season. Teammate Brown, a junior left-hander who can also play outfield, had no decisions in eight relief appearances and hit .295.

Conner, a junior from Riverside, had a .302 career average at Orange Coast and had 23 runs batted in as Orange Coast recorded a 31-11 record this season.

Fletcher, a junior right-hander, won his last three decisions to post a 3-2 record as Harbor reached the state’s final four in the playoffs.

Gonzales, a right-hander, was 7-2 as he led El Rancho in Pico Rivera to a 19-3 record and Whitmont League championship.

Plascencia, a right-hander, was 7-2 for Nogales in La Puente. As a junior and senior he struck out 137 batters in 140 innings.

Shibley hit .378 and stole 26 bases for Barstow and hit .471 as a junior. Shibley figures to be a candidate to lead off for the Toros, as he stole 70 bases in 70 attempts in his four-year high school career.

Woods, a junior right-hander, had a 1.17 ERA in nine relief appearances for Cypress.

In addition to the eight signers, Wing expects outfielders Eddie Luna and Frank Fields, both from Harbor, and pitcher Randy Winans from El Rancho High to be on the team as walk-ons. Winans was 7-0 with four saves for El Rancho.

“Pitching is the name of the game, especially in the California Collegiate Athletic Assn.,” Wing said. “I’m confident the JC pitchers we signed will contribute immediately while we bring the freshmen around slowly.”

Though bypassed in the National Basketball Assn. draft, it didn’t take Leonard Taylor long to get a job. The forward out of UC Berkeley and St. Bernard High signed a guaranteed contract with the Golden State Warriors on Monday. His agent said there were several other guaranteed offers. The 6-foot-8 Taylor was introduced at a Bay Area press conference Thursday along with Warriors No. 1 pick Tim Hardaway--evidence that the Warriors have serious intentions for him despite his free-agent status. Taylor is already on a Warriors workout program.

College Notes:

Loyola Marymount basketball star Hank Gathers just returned from Florida where he was flown to be photographed for the Playboy magazine preseason All-American team. The 10-man team includes LaSalle’s Lionel Simmons, Syracuse’s Derrick Coleman, Georgetown’s Alonzo Mourning, Oregon State’s Gary Payton and Dwayne Schintzius of Florida. Gathers figures to be on most preseason all-star teams . . . Loyola women’s basketball standouts Kristen Bruich and Tricia Gibson are recovering on schedule from knee surgery and are expected to begin conditioning with the team when the fall semester starts. Bruich, a guard, and Gibson, a center, were first-team All-West Coast Athletic Conference selections last season as sophomores . . . One of Loyola’s upcoming basketball opponents, Xavier of Ohio, passes along this bit of trivia: Xavier is one of only six private schools to make the NCAA men’s basketball tournament the last four years. The others are DePaul, Duke, Georgetown, Notre Dame and Syracuse. Loyola is shooting for three in a row . . . Xavier Coach Pete Gillen on last season’s 118-113 victory at Loyola: “We got caught up in trying to outscore people. Although it was a great win, the Loyola Marymount game just fed that monster.” Loyola is tentatively scheduled to play at Xavier in early January . . . Two former Dominguez Hills golfers had impressive showings in recent tournaments. Kurt Bilben, who played in the NCAA Tournament for the Toros in 1987, won the U.S. Amateur Public Links Qualifying Tournament at Rancho, Calif., with a 36-hole total of 142. He advances to the national finals in Lemont, Ill., on July 17-22. Brian Carson placed second in the Southern California PGA’s Southern California Open at Rio Bravo Country Club at Bakersfield.